Our view: Court ruling a reminder that schools' primary job is to educate, not integrate

The Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision marked the beginning of the end for racial segregation in the nation's public schools.

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It was the right decision for a country in which 17 states mandated school segregation and many others practiced it unofficially. But a ruling addressing the U.S. maladies of a half-century ago is not necessarily a prescription for today's ills.

Late last month the Supreme Court issued a

rulingthat severely restricts the ability of public school districts to use race as a factor in determining which students go to which elementary and secondary schools. The decision was denounced by many as a dramatic shift to the right for the court and a return to the bad old days of "separate but equal."

California's schools weren't affected by the Court's ruling due to our passage of Proposition 209 in 1996. That measure prohibits schools from implementing the types of voluntary desegregation programs at the center of this debate.

There's no denying the persistence of racism. But the central inequality plaguing our schools is not second-class treatment for blacks but the second-rate education that too many kids -- of all races and ethnicities -- receive at schools that for too long have emphasized social engineering at the expense of educational excellence.

The ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al.gives schools an opportunity to recommit themselves to solving the real problem facing our public schools: providing equal opportunity to all students. For as much as it was needed, desegregation didn't in and of itself ensure that black kids were better educated. Only a well-run school system can do that.

When it gets down to it, parents want to know that their children are prepared to compete and excel as adults. As long as they are, whether they went to a school that was perfectly balanced between different races is irrelevant. That "diversity" has become an obsession for some school districts seems to be the problem, not the cure. This decision will force schools to stop fighting yesterday's battles and address the challenges of the present.